Term limits proposal to come to La Mesa ballot

La Mesa City Clerk Mary Kennedy on Wednesday notified a group of citizens called the La Mesa Term Limits Committee that its term limits initiative qualified for ballot.

The San Diego County Registrar of Voters confirmed that the committee submitted the 3,306 valid signatures required to qualify the initiative, which amends the city’s Municipal Code “to impose a three consecutive terms limit on the office of City Council member, mayor or any combination of terms thereof.”

The group is headed by La Mesa-Spring Valley School Board member Bill Baber, La Mesa resident Scott Kidwell and City Councilwoman Kristine Alessio.

The city clerk’s certification of sufficiency will be presented to the City Council on May 27. At the meeting, ministerial tasks regarding the ballot process will be executed.

First suggested last spring, the City Council elected not to put a term limits ordinance on the ballot, so Alessio encouraged term limits supporters to gather signatures to qualify the issue as a ballot initiative. The La Jolla Group, a petition drive management firm, was hired to help collect the signatures.

La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid, who has been in elected office in the city since 1981, has been outspoken in his position against term limits.

“This is another set of rules taking away the right of voters to select whom they want when they want them,” Madrid said. “It’s an affront to the voters saying they don’t have the intellect to select whomever they want. I’ve always said we don’t need term limits on the ballot. We already have term limits — they’re called elections.”

In 2010, voters in San Diego passed a citizens initiative for a two-term limit amendment to the County Charter for the county Board of Supervisors with 68 percent of the vote.

“This is a balanced approach,” Alessio said. “It’s modeled after the state term limits law passed by voters in 2012.”

La Mesa City Councilman Ernie Ewin, who will be leaving his seat this year, has had two separate stints on the council, first from 1985-90 and again from 2002-14. Ewin said “leaving the council was a necessity for my family and business reasons, but it also gave me the opportunity to look around, gain experience and see what needed to change, what needed to happen.”

Ewin said he did not sign the petition, but is in favor of term limits to keep elected officials focused on good communications and cooperation and to stay focused. He said he feels term limits stop elected officials from becoming “too focused on themselves and feeling it’s all about them instead of the responsibility they have.”

“It lets other people know this can’t be your life, that you have only three terms to do what you need to do,” he said.

Baber said the group raised more than $16,000 for its effort. He said “the hard part (collecting signatures) is over” and that the group was looking forward to having La Mesa voters weigh in.

“Now we’ll have the opportunity to ask voters if 12 years is the right amount of time,” he said.